Pupils from Room 22 at Fairhaven School with their Ukrainian visitor, Svitlana Kostgrima.
Pupils from Room 22 at Fairhaven School with their Ukrainian visitor, Svitlana Kostgrima.
A story that began at the start of the year has finally found an ending.
The pupils in Room 22 at Fairhaven School were watching when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
“Because we were doing a resilience project at school that talks about empathy, [...] we talked about what we could do to show empathy to children in another country,” says classroom teacher Trish Hunt.
The children decided they wanted to write letters of hope to the children of Ukraine.
“The children were very excited about it, because it was something real that they could to do reach out to children across the world who were a similar age to them.”
Once written, getting them to their destination proved to be problematic, with embassies not responding, the Red Cross also drawing a blank and pandemic issues taking centre-stage.
In the end, the project went on the back-burner - until a few weeks ago when, out of the blue, school chaplain Jan Franklin asked if a visitor from Ukraine could be a guest at the school.
“I said that would be beautiful because our children can give the letters to her. So, the children got to meet first-hand a lady who had come from that war-torn area.
“We were able to give her these letters, and she was so excited to be able to send them on to people that she knew would get them to children.
Using a translator app, pupils asked Svitlana Kostyrina about her name, and she taught them some names along with how to say ‘hello’ and ‘Merry Christmas’ in Ukrainian.
“She shared what the customs of Christmas are in Ukraine, what kind of food they ate and how it was different to the food we eat.
Room 22 pupils with their letters to children in Ukraine.
“She loved it, and she was quite emotional when we first gave her the letters, and the children were quite moved by the emotion of it all, and could see first-hand that something that is given in ahora is received in aroha.”
Trish says she thinks the children realised that people in Ukraine are just like them.
“They see them on TV, but they are real - they have a different language, but they are the same as us.”
She says the project, while it took all year to complete, did help the children feel more connected to their emotions.
“I said to them, you may feel like you are a little person and feel you can’t do anything on your own, but collectively, you have given something of love and hope and inspiration.”
